At the heart of Sri Ramana Maharshi’s teaching stands the simple yet radical movement of turning attention back upon the one who experiences, crystallized in the question “Who am I?”. Rather than allowing the mind to run outward toward objects, thoughts, or experiences, the instruction is to attend to the very sense of “I” itself. When any thought arises, the recommended approach is to ask, “To whom has this thought arisen?”, recognize that it has arisen to “me,” and then immediately inquire, “Who am I?”. This process is not meant as an intellectual analysis or philosophical speculation, but as a direct, experiential investigation into the source of the “I”-thought. By remaining with the bare feeling of “I” or “I am,” without attaching it to any attribute such as “this” or “that,” attention is gradually drawn back to its origin.

Within this inquiry, the ego is understood as a false identification, essentially a bundle of thoughts centered on the body–mind notion of “I.” All other thoughts are said to depend on this primary “I”-thought; when it is traced back and seen through, the edifice of secondary thoughts loses its footing. Through persistent turning of attention toward the source of the “I,” the separate ego-sense is gradually dissolved. What then stands revealed is the true Self, which is described as pure awareness or consciousness, ever-present and self-luminous. Liberation, in this vision, is not the acquisition of something new, but the recognition that one has always been this non-dual Self, temporarily obscured by misidentification.

The practical essence of the path lies in maintaining a steady, non-verbal awareness of the sense of being, and repeatedly returning to it whenever distraction arises. Instead of following each thought-stream, the seeker redirects attention to the experiencer: “Who experiences this?”. Over time, this continuous self-attention matures into abidance in the Self, where the mind no longer habitually moves outward. The culmination of such inquiry is the quiet abidance in pure “I am,” in which the ego has subsided into its source and the Self shines by itself as the ground of all experience.